Star Wars Party (Episode 1)

I'm a party person. Well, not really. I'm the girl who will find an excuse to get out of going to a party. However planning a party is a whole other story. BC (Before Children) we had awesome themed parties with costumes, themed food and cocktails, the works. In the last seven years, however, most of our parties have heavily involved cartoon characters. It was time to change that.

My husband mentioned that he wanted a big shin-dig for his 45th and I agreed, thinking that we would have some people in the basement, open some beers and call it a night. That's not what happened.

Lando and Leia. Hey, it could happen....

Instead, an EPIC Star Wars party is what happened. About three weeks before the party, I was sitting at my computer and decided it was time to get organized but that I should probably have some sort of theme in mind so I poked around Pinterest and  messaged my husband:
Me: How about a 70s-themed party?
Me: OHOHOHOHOHOHOH!!!!
Me: Star Wars.
Him: OH MY GOD
Him: OH MY GOD
Me: ....May the Fourty-Fifth Be With You
Him: OH MY GOD
Him: YES YES YES YES YES YES

That was pretty definitive. Less than an hour later, invites had been sent out to over 100 people in I don't know how many states and I had three weeks to plan and execute this whole thing.

When I don't know where to start, I start with water bottles. I try to dress up water bottles for all of my parties because they are an easy way to add to them theme AND they get people to drink water. Win/win. They also give me something to get started on while my brain works out the details. 

These were pretty simple to do. I wrapped the bottles in black duct tape and then downloaded the emblems into Design Space and cut them on my Cricut.

From there I decided to keep it pretty simple with a black, yellow and silver color scheme with silver stars and a free Star Wars Font. So I started with a back drop for the food table.

The "Long time ago was downloaded and cut as it's own image so I didn't have to mess around with finding the right font, although I do wish I had made it bigger. I cut those letters out of vinyl and then cut the "Happy Birthday" out of card stock and mounted both on a plastic table cloth. The stars were from Amazon. Also, there's a Death Star, just sort of hanging out.

Next up was setting the mood as people walked in the door. The party was in the basement and when it's full of people, it can be hard to hear the doorbell or to fight your way across the room to get up the stairs. So I put a sign on the door to let people know to let themselves in and where to go.

We had the score from the original trilogy playing when our guests came in to set the tone. And then they followed the tracks down to the party.

There was a very interesting discussion while I was prepping for the party about what bantha feet look like and what the tracks might look like if bantha didn't have long fur and if they left tracks somewhere other than the sand. In the end, I found an image of an "unknown animal track" and used that and then cut them out of cheap contact paper from The Dollar Tree. They served their purpose, as far as I know, everyone found their way down to the party. 

Then, just for fun, I made some little signs for the bathrooms. Because how cute is that little Yoda?? (Not to mention, if you've had a few to drink, go up the stairs and look for Darth Vader is pretty simple and might spare someone getting lost in my laundry room.)

I kept the centerpieces pretty simple. I found some lunch boxes on clearance at Party City and added some balloons and some silver star confetti because more sparkle is always good.

And then, we have the "Wow, you're really crazy project" for this party. While cruising Pinterest, I saw some party decorations with some paper lanterns that were spray painted to look like planets from the Star Wars Universe. Only, I wanted a lot of them. I wanted the entire area above the bar to be a galaxy far, far away. So I ordered like 50 lanterns of different sizes and a whole lot of craft paint later.....

The Purple Planet, Naboo, Geonsis, Kamino, Hoth, Tatooine, Coruscant, Degobah, Alderaan, Bespin, H'nemthe, Mustafar and a bunch of tie fighters.

These were definitely the focal point of the party! They looked SO COOL lit up from the inside with battery-operated LEDs. 

Here's a detail shot of a few of the planets in various stages.

So, there you go the set-up and decorations for the coolest Star Wars Party (well, not really but close) ever!!! Stay tuned for Epic Star Wars Party Episode II: the food and beverages, which can be found here.